Ourself

Part of speech: pronoun

Definitions

1. A reflexive pronoun used by a monarch or editor in place of the first-person plural when speaking of oneself as the one in authority
2. The singular reflexive form of the first-person plural, used by a sovereign or writer to refer to the speaker alone in a formal way
3. A rare reflexive pronoun that some people use for the speaker and others as a group, especially in royal or editorial speech

Etymology: "Ourself" is a compound formed from "our" and "self," and its history follows the same pattern as its sibling "myself" and "yourself." In Middle English it was written "oure-selfe," joining the possessive "our" to the noun "self," which then meant "one's own person." The pairing was a way of stressing the speakers' own identity within a group. The word is mainly used in the "royal we" and in formal or editorial writing, where a single writer speaks on behalf of a group. Its occasional use in place of "ourselves" reflects the same logic, since the reflexive pronoun is built from the same parts as "myself" and "yourself."

Synonyms: ourselves